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About Kari Sullivan

Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Queensland. See more: https://languages-cultures.uq.edu.au/profile/1106/kari-sullivan

Written by Kari Sullivan

The ‘Strange’ Syntax of the Second Amendment

Posted by on July 14, 2021

The Second Amendment is not sloppy or ungrammatical, as some modern analysts claim. Rather, the Amendment is written in a variety of English that no longer exists. Since none of us are native speakers of late 18th century American English, we cannot expect to have good intuitions about its grammaticality or interpretation. When we read […]